Eighteen months ago, his anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks was riding high following its first major releases of classified US documents that captured worldwide attention.

But with WikiLeaks in financial difficulties after a funding blockade, it is Assange himself making headlines more than bombshell leaks on the website.

Eccentric and lanky with a shock of platinum white hair, Assange eagerly took up the role of WikiLeaks frontman, telling AFP in an interview in August 2010: “We are creating a new standard for free press.”

But it was in the same month that his problems began, when Swedish authorities issued a warrant for his arrest over claims of rape and sexual assault stemming from encounters with two female WikiLeaks volunteers.

He was then arrested in December in London and, denying the claims, has been fighting extradition ever since in a marathon round of court dates.

Assange has proved a divisive figure, having won a huge left-of-centre following but enraging governments — particularly the United States, which mulled legal action against him.

Born on July 3, 1971 in the coastal city of Townsville in Queensland, northeastern Australia, Assange says he spent his early childhood living on and off on the nearby Magnetic Island with his mother.

Assange has described his childhood as nomadic, saying in all he attended 37 different schools.

In one memorable incident he described getting into trouble after hitting a girl over the head with a hammer at primary school — adding that she was unharmed.

Living in Melbourne in the 1990s, the teenage Assange discovered a new talent: computer hacking.

But his new interest did not go undetected and he was charged with 30 counts of computer crime, including allegedly hacking police and US military computers.

He admitted most of the charges and walked away with a fine.

When he was 18 his son Daniel was born. The identity of his mother is not known but Assange has reportedly blamed the ensuing custody battle for turning his hair white.

After his brush with the law, Assange says he worked in a number of different fields, as a security consultant, a researcher in journalism and started his own IT company.

He says he founded WikiLeaks in 2006 with around 10 others from the human rights, media and technology fields.

The site went online in 2007 and began leaking secret documents well before its coup of releasing some 77,000 secret US files on Afghanistan in July 2010.

That first mega-leak was followed in October 2010 by the release of some 400,000 so-called “Iraq war logs” and in November that year, it began the slow release of more than 250,000 diplomatic cables from 274 US embassies.

That too ran into trouble as Assange fell out spectacularly with a string of “partner” media organisations in the release, including The New York Times in the United States and The Guardian in Britain.

Until his arrest, Assange seemed to lead a life out of a spy novel: constantly on the move, bouncing from capital to capital and staying with supporters and friends of friends, frequently switching his phone number.

For an anti-secrecy champion he is notoriously secretive about his own private life, and he had tried to block the publication of a memoir in September despite having sat for more than 50 hours of interviews with a ghost writer.

He was even elusive in his last public appearance.

Assange was not in court Wednesday but did attend a screening in London on May 23, wearing a full face mask.

“This may be my last time in public, so I thought I should start with a situation where you won’t be able to see me anymore,” he explained.

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